Page 41 of Supernova

The audience cheers for her when the song ends, and Frankie steps aside as the curtain falls, giving her time to change. Ophelia is waiting right there with a dress that she puts on over her leotard, and she takes the beret from Frankie, then fastens a small hook on the side of the dress before whispering, "Go!"

Frankie is back in place before the music changes, ready for the curtain to go up again. Instead of the pure white backdrop, the New York City street scene has been put up, and Frankie steps in front of it, waiting for the light to find her. When it does, she channels the feeling she’d had all those years ago when she’d taken the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, leaving behind her familiar neighborhood with its friendly neighbors, grocery stores, and quiet feel. Standing there in the hustle and bustle of the city had overwhelmed her; she was just a few train stops away from home, but it felt like light years. Could she do this? Would she get chosen from the ranks of talented hopefuls at the auditions? Maybe she should just go home and make her mother happy—marry a nice Italian boy from the neighborhood.

Those fears and uncertainties fill Frankie again as she turns slowly in wonder, looking up at the tall buildings on the backdrop. She puts her arms out to the sides and tilts her chin to the sky with a huge grin, spinning around to the rising music like a woman who just discovered her freedom.

But it ends quickly. The music changes to something dark and atmospheric, and Frankie falls to the floor in a puddle. Surreptitiously, she feels for the hook that Ophelia had fastened on the side of her dress and frees it, pulling the fabric away from her and leaving it on the stage as she stands, this time wearing just her leotard and nylons with a black beaded dress that clicks and clacks as she turns. The very sound of it brings back the night in the car with Whit Evans when he’d made her change into the beaded dress in front of the driver.

This time when the music changes, it’s to a scattered, unfocused, anxiety-ridden jazz number with horns all over the place. Frankie flits to and fro, mimicking a woman flung between groups of people as she dances. She holds an imaginary drink in hand, knocks it back, passes it to someone else, then dances on—this time drunkenly. She trips, her moves becoming sloppy. At one point she falls to the ground, panting on her hands and knees, then turns her head and looks up at some unseen figure with fear. Frankie holds up one hand to shield herself, mouthing the wordNOwith as much conviction as she can. She lets her face show the audience exactly how terrified she is, and as the curtain falls, she can feel their tension as they live the scene along with her.

Ophelia rushes to her as instructed the minute the velvet curtain has hidden Frankie, and she looks down with just a beat of hesitation. “Are you sure, Mrs. Maxwell?” she asks in a whisper.

“Go,” Frankie says with a nod.

Ophelia crouches down and uses the seam-ripper that Jo had given to Frankie, pulling at Frankie’s nylons and leotard until she’s ripped holes and left long ladders in the nylons. She shreds the outfit the best she can, taking one of Frankie’s shoes and then reaching over as Frankie had instructed her to do and smearing the red lipstick across Frankie’s cheek. She looks down at Frankie with wide eyes, uncertain about the mess she’s just made. Frankie nods at her and points at the side of the stage so that Ophelia will be gone when the curtain rises on this new scene.

When it does, the audience gives an audible gasp; this version of Frankie is not what they’d been expecting. The music she’s chosen here has cracks of thunder and the sound of falling rain, and Frankie sits up slowly, looking around. Slowly, she stands, though she’s missing a shoe and this makes dancingdifficult. She does it anyway, her moves jerky and uncertain like a woman who has lost her balance in life. Frankie puts both hands to her face, hiding behind them as if she’s hiding from the world. She stumbles and gets up again, stumbles and then rises slowly, kicking off her remaining shoe so that she can move freely. In her stockings, she glides across the floor, turning her moves from herky-jerky, halting attempts at dance into the freeform grace of a butterfly once again.

By the time the curtain drops for her final change, Frankie has risen from the ashes like a phoenix, showing everyone that whatever terrible thing had happened to her hadn’t kept her down. She spins one more time, the beaded dress swinging out around her as she holds both arms directly overhead into the spotlight. A tear falls down one cheek as the curtain descends, and Ophelia springs into action. Someone out of Frankie’s view activates a pulley system, changing out the city backdrop for the black one as Frankie strips out of her ruined dance costume, tossing it into a heap that Ophelia will grab in a moment.

There is no time to waste as Ophelia hands Frankie a small mirror and a wet cloth to wipe the red lipstick and the tears from her face. The moment she’s done, she steps into a white gown that Jo has quickly sewn up for her, then stands still so that Ophelia can help her step into her flat ballet slippers and place a simple white veil over her head. She sets the netting carefully over Frankie’s face, which helps to hide the fact that most of her makeup has been smeared and wiped away at this point.

“How do I look?” Frankie asks nervously, looking at Ophelia from behind her veil. The black backdrop is in place behind her. Ophelia hands her a bouquet of silk flowers.

“You look beautiful,” Ophelia says in a reverent whisper. “Like a bride.”

The music changes and the opening notes of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” fill the auditorium. Ophelia scoops up the castoff costume and scampers away in time for the final curtain, which peels back to reveal Frankie the bride standing in the spotlight against the stark black background. She’d considered flipping the first and last backdrops so that her black beret dance was set against black, and her white wedding gown scene was done with the white background, but in the end, she’d preferred the contrast.

Standing there in virginal white, with the trauma she’d lived through already revealed to the audience, feels even more poignant with black behind her. It’s as if she is there, hopeful and full of dreams just like every other bride before her, but with a dark cloud lingering in her past. Frankie lets the music guide her as she begins to dance in a classical ballet style, moving across the entire stage like an excited bride trying to do everything and speak to everyone on her wedding day.

As Frankie reaches the side of the stage where she knows Jo is sitting, she pauses and lets her eyes search a crowd that she cannot see, hoping that she lands on Jo for even a moment. Jo’s friendship and love have been a gift to Frankie this past year, and there is no way she could have gotten up on this stage without feeling the kind of unconditional support that comes from a real friend.

Frankie moves across the front of the stage and stops at the other side, doing the same thing. She smiles at the people who are shrouded by the stage lights, hoping that whoever is sitting there can feel her love and gratitude. Even the people she doesn’t know are filling her heart with joy at the moment; these are strangers who have come to see her in her moment of truth. These are people who paid the price of a ticket, putting themselves in her hands for the evening as she guides them through a performance that they certainly could not have imagined they were in for.

As the final moments of the song swell and reach the highest rafters of the auditorium, Frankie moves to center stage again as her movements become more grand. She takes a final turn, picking a spot in the distance to focus on as she turns, turns, turns. The lights spin and everything swirls around her until suddenly she stops with her back to the audience.

“One, two, three,” Frankie whispers to herself, gripping her bouquet with both hands. At precisely the moment she’d planned, she throws her arms high, sending the bouquet sailing over her head and out into the audience, just like a bride throwing her flowers to the maidens waiting to catch it at a wedding.

The audience cheers as Frankie turns to them, arms wide. There are real tears in her eyes as she pulls back her veil and looks out at them, both hands pressed to her lips. She bows to stage right, then stage left, and one more time to the center before sinking to her knees, the folds and gathers of her white dress puffing up around her as she sits there, smiling up at the spotlight triumphantly.

The curtain falls. So do Frankie’s tears.

TWENTY

jo

The curtain fallsfor the last time on Frankie as she sits in the center of the stage, her white dress billowing around her like a cloud, hands over her mouth as she smiles with tears in her eyes.

Jo jumps to her feet immediately, clapping and cheering along with everyone else. It was stunning to see her friend up there, moving her body in ways that Jo has never seen her move. There is such a grace, such a sense of self-possession, when Frankie dances, and Jo is completely stunned by the artistry of the performance, not to mention the content.

Bill, who is on Jo's right side, leans over to speak directly into her ear as they stand there giving Frankie the ovation she deserves. "Was that...was she...?" He can't even finish the sentence before tears of pride spring to Jo's eyes. She nods, glancing at their children in the seats next to Bill. They clearly have no idea what the message of Frankie's show is, and she's grateful for that. If anything, her girls look starry-eyed over seeing their mother's friend up on stage in costume, and that's about all they need to know at their age.

"Yes," Jo says with a single nod. "I think she was." And this floods her entire body with awe and wonder, this notion of herstrong, talented friend being hurt by a man this way. There was no real indication in the performance of who hurt her, but knowing the details won't make it any more vivid than watching Frankie on stage had.

Jo looks around at the faces that fill the auditorium. She'd worked her tail off, advertising the performance on the bulletin boards at the hospital, enlisting the help of their friends to get the word out, and making sure that the director of public relations at Cape Kennedy had known about Frankie giving a one-night, one-woman show. It's gratifying to see so many new and also so many familiar faces as Jo looks around, and she's happy for Frankie. The night feels like an all-around success.

The curtain opens again and this time Frankie is standing there, ready to take a deep bow. She smiles as the volume of the audience's cheering skyrockets, and then she takes a final bow as the lights come up.

"I'm going to go and congratulate her," Jo says, scooting past Bill and her children as she makes her way to the aisle. "I'll meet you in the lobby, okay?"

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